Kevin Cook - Tommy’s Honour - The Extraordinary Story of Golf’s Founding Father and Son

Not to humble him, never that, but to be more like him. Not as a rival, but more like an equal. More like a man. Tommy was nearly as tall as his father, and suspected he would soon be stronger. And the more he grew, the more he believed that a boy needed to make his own name in the world. He needed to be more than his father’s caddie.

With such thoughts in his head and the scent of tobacco in his nose, Tommy took the driver from his father’s hand. He took a pinch of sand from the box, knelt to make a sand tee for his ball and then stood tall, waving the driver back and forth. His swing was short and fast: bang! Tommy’s drives didn’t always go straight, but a few went further than his father’s. This one sailed past the other ball before it bounced near Swilcan Burn, the brook that curled past the putting-green.

Tommy was thrilled. How many lads could hit a ball so far? How many grown men could?

His father was less impressed. Long or short didn’t matter so much to Tom Morris. Position mattered. Tommy’s drive was long, but too far to the left. Tom checked his pocket-watch as he set off towards the green. A minute later he was hitting again. Without a word he took the wooden niblick from Tommy and slapped a low approach the wind could not catch. His ball cleared the burn by a safe five yards and rolled to the back of the green.

Tommy faced a harder shot. There was no easy play from the left side. The only way to stop the ball near the hole would be a high, soft pitch, the opposite of the usual approach. But no one attempted such shots with the shallow-faced clubs of the day. Tommy had tried hitting shots from flat ground with the rut iron, a lofted club made for lifting a ball out of cart or wheelbarrow ruts. He found that he could make the ball drop and stop. Not every time – you had to strike it just right or you’d foozle the shot. But when it worked, the ball came down like a snowflake.

He waggled the rut iron. His father looked surprised – Tommy liked seeing that. He drew the club back, keeping his hands high, then yanked them straight down, chopping the rut iron’s heavy head into the turf. He grunted; dirt flew.

The ball squirted along the ground, bouncing two or three times before it splished into the burn. He dropped the rut iron. Damned useless stick. He lost the hole.

His father moved to the second teeing-ground a few yards away. There was no sandbox here; you fished a bit of sand from the bottom of the hole on the first green. Tom Morris fashioned his sand tee, then pulled his driver back over his shoulder – tick – and whipped it smoothly to the ball – tock. But this ball flew low. It was a ‘scalded cat’, a near-miss that skipped along the ground. On dry days a scalded cat would run out of sight, but this one kicked up dew and stopped only 120 yards out.

Tommy took his pinch of sand from the bottom of the first hole and made a perch for his ball. His father watched him take his stance. Was he aiming for Cheape’s Bunker? No sane golfer tried to clear that crater, not without a gale at his back, and the wind was blowing across the fairway. Tom shook his head – the boy was his own worst enemy.

But Tommy had a plan, and a picture in his mind. He remembered all the rounds he had played with his father, not the friendly foursomes but the singles, one against one. They were all losses. At home the old man was kind, even tender. He tucked Tommy into bed every night and they prayed together. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. But there was no kindness on the links, where Tommy was beaten again and again, leaving him to dream of the day he would win at last. A day when he told the ball to duck into the hole and down it went. A day when he willed the ball to curve in flight and it curved. Now he used the dream to picture his next shot. Pulling the driver back with his right elbow high, he brought it down and sent his drive on a beeline for Cheape’s Bunker. In mid-flight the ball curved to the right as if it knew where to go.

Sheer willpower may have helped, but so did something more tangible: the spin Tommy had applied with a swing that went from high and away from his body to low and closer, towards his left foot. That sidespin gave the ball a gentle arc from left to right, and his drive landed safely to the right of the bunker, leaving him a clear shot to the green.

‘Well played,’ his father said.

Praise from Tom Morris! That alone made this a good day. And it might get better yet, for Tommy had a secret: he was learning to make the ball curve at will.

They played fast, as always, with Tom checking his pocket-watch. He hated spending more than two hours to play eighteen holes. As he marched down the fairway he would reach over and take a club from Tommy, who carried the clubs under his armpit. Within seconds of reaching his ball, Tom began his clockwork swing and dispatched the ball on a low, straight line. He knew every cranny of the links and always took the safe route, trusting opponents to make more mistakes than he did.

Tommy played a bolder game. He was strong – the only boy his age in town who could topple a full-grown cow, not that his father would allow mischief like cow-tipping if he knew of it. On the links, Tommy swung hard and took chances. If a high-risk shot failed, he would try again. And again. He was more than fearless. He was a joyful golfer, a boy who could laugh at a terrible shot and swing harder at the next.

His ball had found a level lie near Cheape’s Bunker. The ball was a dull white gutty, made of gutta percha, the sap of a gum tree in Malaysia, a far corner of Queen Victoria’s vast empire. Hard as rock, it made a loud click at impact, like a billiard ball hitting another. This one clicked and climbed like a rocket as he slammed it towards the putting-green. With a chip and a putt, he won the second hole. The match was even, one hole apiece. This was match play, the usual way of keeping score. Total strokes didn’t matter; each hole was a separate contest, and whoever won the most holes won the day.

They halved the next two as the wind picked up, humming in their ears. Neither golfer spoke much. Tommy won the fifth hole when his father left a three-pace putt a yard short. Everyone knew how Tom Morris struggled with short putts. ‘You’d be a fine putter, father,’ Tommy needled, ‘if the hole was always a yard closer.’

Tom smiled. The boy had spirit. But the boy was a long way from winning the day. In fact this was golf the way Tom liked it. Out-driven and outplayed for five holes, he was only one behind with miles to go.

Clouds turned red as the sun climbed over the sea. When a low cloud began drizzling, Tommy reached into a jacket pocket where he kept a lump of pine tar to aid his grip. He found the tar as well as a slick, blackened oatcake; the breakfast he had stuck in the wrong pocket. He tossed the oatcake over his shoulder for the crows to gag on.

At the sixth hole, called Heathery due to its rough, weedy putting-green, both players lay two and had thoughts of chipping in for three. Tommy often joked that this green was more brown than green. In spots you could see bits of the seashells that gave the hole its traditional name, Hole o’ Shell. On a windless day you could hear shells crunch under your boots. Putts didn’t roll here, they bounced. Tom had no trouble bump-and-running his way to a four, while Tommy two-putted for a frustrating five, the same five any club man could make with four gouty swings and a lucky putt.

The High Hole, the seventh, was where Tom loved to tell of the Great Storm of 1860. Waving his arm towards the beach, he re-launched the tale of Captain Maitland-Dougall, recalling the day when the captain stood poised to compete for the medals of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club. But a tempest rose up! Winds and five-yard waves capsized a ship in the bay. Ten men dragged the town’s lifeboat across the links to the raging surf, but who would lead them? Captain Maitland-Dougall! Dropping his clubs, he left his fellow golfers behind and leaped into the lifeboat, taking the stroke oar himself. A dozen sailors were saved that day, many pulled from the maelstrom by Maitland-Dougall himself. When the captain had rowed the lifeboat safely to shore, he returned to the links. Wet as an otter, his arms like lead weights, he took up his clubs and won the gold medal with a score of 112.